Category: Buttercream

The end of winter is now in sight which makes me very happy. As exciting as falling snow is, grey sludge the next day is not fun! These dark days have me longing for sunshine and anything bright and happy.

This post is mostly about how I decorated this cake and what I learnt, with the recipe thrown in at the end.

I decided I wanted a sunny buzzy bee theme for this cake. I made oval macarons which I filled with the same filling as the cake and then used edible marker to decorate the shells. I used 2 almond slithers for the wings which were just pushed into the filling.

I made 300g of American buttercream to crumb coat the cake and then covered the cake in yellow Candymelts to look like honey comb. I did this using a clean piece of bubbles wrap.

It’s the first time I’ve used the bubble wrap method and here’s what I learnt.

I think the outcome would look more natural if the bubble wrap was cut on the diagonal instead of straight. I will do this again as I love the outcome but I’d definitely cut the bubble wrap differently.

When measuring how much you need to go on your cake add at least 2 cm extra as once the candy melts are spread into the wrap it will not fit exactly.

Cut the bubble wrap about 3 cm taller than your cake, this way you have some bubble wrap to hold which doesn’t have chocolate on. I think the wrapping looks best a little taller than your cake too.

Candymelts set quickly so you will need to work quickly. Follow the instructions on the bag to melt the whole bag. Your cake will have been in the fridge setting your crumb coat and while it is still very cold wrap your cake. I laid the bubble wrap in line with the edge of the table I was working on. Spread the melted Candymelts evenly on top and lay your cake on its side with the base of the cake lining up with the edge of the bubble wrap. Start at one end of the bubble wrap and roll the cake with the already attached bubble wrap along the length the the bubble wrap covering your cake. Stand it up and leave it for a few mins before peeling the bubble wrap off carefully.

Passion Fruit Chiffon Cake

220g plain flour

175g caster sugar

1,5tsp baking powder

0,5tsp salt

60ml sunflower oil

3 large eggs

1 lemon zested

100ml unsweetened passion fruit juice

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 165°C.

Line the bottom of 2 x 5″ tins with a circle of baking paper.

Sift together the dry ingredients and mix with a whisk to ensure evenly distributed.

Make a well in the middle and add oil, egg yolks, lemon zest and passion fruit juice. Mix until smooth.

In a clean bowl beat egg whites and cream of tartar until stiff peaks form.

Fold yolk mixture into beaten egg whites 1/4 at a time until just mixed.

Gently pour batter equally into the two prepared tins.

Bake for 30-35 mins until the top springs back when lightly pressed.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 mins before removing from the tins.

Passion Fruit filling

3tsp cornflour

1/2 cup passion fruit purée

2 TBS heavy cream

85g white chocolate chips

90g butter

2 TBS caster sugar

In a small saucepan whisk sugar and cornflour.

Add the passion fruit purée & cream and whisk together.

Bring to the boil while whisking continuously, turn the heat down to medium and continue whisking until thick, about 4 mins.

Remove from the heat & whisk in white chocolate chips until melted. Let cool slightly and whisk in butter.

Allow to cool completely before filling your cake. This could be made the day before and kept in the fridge over night.

Wow, this has turned into a very long blog post, if you lasted to the end and could make sense of my descriptions, congratulations! I hope you found it useful.

One of my favourite dessert choices when we go out for dinner is Italian Lemon Tart, the bright lemon filling with the crisp pastry base. Sweet vs tart, Perfection! These cookies are inspired by just this. The filling for the cookies is the same lemon filling used in lemon tarts, paired with the sweet lemon cookies, it works so well!

Lemon Cookie Sandwich Recipe (makes 12 Cookie Sandwiches)

115g softened butter

200g caster sugar

1 egg

Zest of 1 lemon (keep the lemon for the filling)

1 tsp vanilla extract

200g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarb

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 175C. Line 2 baking trays.

Sift the flour, bicarb, baking powder and salt and stir with a whisk to evenly distribute.

Beat the butter and sugar until pale.

Add the egg and combine, add the vanilla extract and lemon zest and mix. Scrape down the bowl to ensure all is mixed well.

Add the flour mixture and combine.

Place mixture into the fridge for 1 hour to make it easier to roll into balls.

To ensure you have equal sized cookies to match up at the end I weighed my dough at 24g per ball.

Place 6 per tray and gently flatten a little with your fingers.

Bake for 8-10 minutes while you weigh & roll the next batch of cookies. Continue until you have made 24 cookies.

Allow cookies to cool on the tray before removing as they will still be soft.

In the meanwhile make the lemon filling.

Lemon cream filling

235g sugar

2 eggs

135g butter

50ml lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

Place all ingredients into a small pot.

On a medium heat whisk continuously until the butter is all melted and all the ingredients are combined.

Turn the heat up to high and boil for 4 mins whisking all the time.

Take the mixture off the heat and as it cools it will become thicker. It will not become solid.

While it is cooling make your buttercream.

Vanilla buttercream filling

100g butter softened

200g icing sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

Beat the butter for 2 mins until paler in colour.

Sift icing sugar into butter and beat for 6 mins.

Add vanilla extract and beat for 2 mins.

Choose a piping tip and fill a piping bag with the icing. Pipe an icing ring onto the cookies leaving a space in the middle for the lemon.

Spoon or pipe the lemon filling into the cookies and place another cookie on top.

I hope you give this recipe a try. The sweet lemon cookie with the tart lemon filling is perfect!

Happy New Year Lovely’s! I hope you all had a fabulous festive season with family and friends. I’m really excited for 2018, I love nothing more than starting a new planner, writing up my hopes and goals for a new year and working to reach them.

This blog will have a few changes this year, trying to bake, take pics, edit and write a post every week is rather constraining on my creativeness. I will rather post twice a month and hope to have a beautiful cake using different techniques and one other recipe to share. I will still be baking all the time and sharing pics and sometimes recipes on Instagram and Facebook so if you don’t follow me yet, make sure to find me so you don’t miss out.

I recently made this gorgeous woodland themed chocolate cake. I used my Chocolate Sponge Cake Recipe (below), filled it with dark chocolate ganache, covered it with chocolate American Buttercream and chocolate bark shards. I decorated it using American buttercream which was piped onto the chocolate bark, I used a grass tip for the grass and added cute little ladybug and toadstool macarons to bring it to life. The door was made with polymer clay which is safe to use on food but is not edible.

Chocolate Sponge Cake – 6″ tins

225g softened butter

225g soft brown sugar

4 eggs

1tsp vanilla extract

200g plain flour

55g cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 160°C and line the base of your 6″ tins with a circle of baking paper.

Cream the butter and sugar, until pale and fluffy.

On a medium speed add eggs one at a time mixing each in completely before adding the next.

Add vanilla extract. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and ensure everything is evenly mixed.

In a separate bowl sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder and using a whisk mix evenly. Add half the dry mixture to the wet and combine. Scrape down the sides and mix in the other half.

Evenly divide your mixture between the two cake tins and spread it out evenly.

Bake at 160°C for 30-35 mins until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Chocolate Ganache

500g dark chocolate

200g cream

On half power on your microwave, heat the chocolate until softened but not melted.

Heat cream until almost boiling. Pour cream over chocolate and stir until glossy.

Chocolate Shards

Gently melt chocolate in the microwave until smooth and spreadable. Cut 2 sheets of parchment paper long enough to wrap around your cake plus a little overlap. Pour melted chocolate onto baking or parchment paper and spread into a thin layer. Place the second sheet of paper on top and roll into a tube. Secure loosely with a band or clip ensuring not to dent the paper. Once cooled and solidified, slowly unroll the paper creating bark shaped slithers to attach to your cake.

I hope you enjoyed this post and get a chance to bake a chocolate cake to enjoy with family and friends. If you have any ideas or requests of recipes you’d like to see in the future, please leave a comment below.

After having a fabulous week in London at Fair Cake learning some new skills especially all about sugar flowers, I’m ready to bake in my own kitchen again. I tend to stick to my tried and tested recipes but I’ve recently become rather obsessed with caramel everything, which reminded me about this recipe which I haven’t made in ages!

You know by now that I love a recipe that is easy to change up and this one is perfect. Your choices are unlimited with what you choose to use as your surprise in the middle of your cupcakes. The original recipes calls for soft caramels but I couldn’t find any so I chose Rolos which are the perfect size.

Caramel Surprise Cupcakes

115g butter, softened

150g brown sugar

2 eggs

5g instant coffee granules

1TBS boiling water

280g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

115ml milk

12 soft caramels/ rolos/ mars bites etc

Preheat the oven to 175°C and place 12 cupcake liners into a muffin tin.

Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.

Crack the eggs into a bowl and give them a quick mix with a fork to break then down a bit. Slowly add the egg waiting for what you have added to be incorporated before adding more. Half way through you will need to scrape down the sides of the bowl before continuing.

Dissolve the coffee with the boiling water and mix into the butter mixture.

Sift the flour and baking powder and give it a good mix to ensure it is well distributed.

Add half the flour and mix until combined.

Add half the milk and repeat with the rest.

Place a tablespoon full of mixture into each cupcake wrapper and place a caramel/rolo on top, push it in a little but not all the way to the bottom. Place another tablespoon of mixture on top to cover your surprise.

Bake for 20 mins or until a skewer inserted into the cupcake comes out clean. Try to skewer around your surprise or you won’t be able to tell anything about the cake.

Cool in the tin for 5 mins before removing to a wire wrack to cool.

You could eat these warm with a spoon of vanilla ice cream, plain as they are or wait until they have cooled down to pipe buttercream onto them.

Buttercream Rainbow

200g butter, softened

400g icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Your choice of gel food colours

Beat the butter and sifted icing sugar for 8 mins.

Add vanilla extract and beat for another 2 mins.

Divide your icing into smaller bowls the same number as your chosen colours and colour your icing.

Put each colour into a separate small piping bag.

Cut a square sheet of cling wrap and lay it flat on the table. Pipe a stripe of each colour buttercream next to each other, you may need to add another layer on top to use up most of your buttercream.

Roll the cling wrap onto itself to make a big tube and twist one end. Place the open end into a large piping bag with your choice of tip inserted.

Decorate your cupcakes!

Enjoy your rainbow surprise, finding a caramel inside is almost like finding the pot of gold 😉

This is one of my favourite flavour combinations, peanut butter and chocolate just go together amazingly and last week happened to be my birthday! So… happy birthday to me and I got to scoff my favourite cake! It was made up of 4 layers of chocolate fudge cake, strawberry jam filling and peanut butter Swiss meringue buttercream. It was decorated with hand piped buttercream flowers using the fabulous White Flower Cake Shop piping tip 402. I’m still getting to grips with this tip but I am very happy with how my flowers turned out.

Chocolate Fudge Cake Recipe

(Makes 2 x 6″ cakes each cut in half to make 4 layers)

265g self-raising flour

3 ¾ TBS cocoa

1 ½ tsp bicarbonate soda

225g caster sugar

3 eggs

225ml sunflower oil

225ml milk

2 tsp vanilla

1 TBS Nestle caramel (or other thick caramel)

Preheat the oven to 170°C

Line both tins with parchment paper, it makes removing the cake much easier.

Sieve self-raising flour, cocoa and bicarbonate soda into a bowl and stir in the caster sugar.

In another bowl whisk the eggs, add milk, oil, vanilla and caramel and whisk together.

Add liquid mixture to flour mixture and mix well. It will be quite runny.

Pour equally into the prepared cake tins.

Bake for 25-30 mins until a skewer comes out clean.

Cool in the tins for 5 mins before removing to a wire rack.

Once the cake is cool you can start to decorate it. I made Swiss Meringue Buttercream from my recipe here and added 3/4 of a cup of peanut butter just before it was ready.

I warmed 4 TBS of strawberry jam in the microwave and then pushed it through a small sieve to ensure no lumps or seeds were in it.

Once the cake is filled, stacked and crumb coated make sure it has enough time in the fridge to firm up before you start to decorate it.

I divided the remaining buttercream into different bowls and coloured it as I wished. I covered the cake before piping the flowers. You do not need to pipe directly into the cake, if you pipe onto parchment paper first and then place them into the fridge for 30 mins, they will be stable enough to move with an offset spatula.

Enjoy your cake! I hope you feel inspired to try this recipe and enjoy decorating it. If you do please tag me in the pic, I’d love to see!

This week I had the pleasure of making a birthday cake for a friend who happened to mention that she loves lemon meringue pie. This tied in very well with lasts weeks blog post of Lemon Meringue Cupcakes. One of the things I enjoy most about baking is the creativity and science behind baking and recreating something as classic as a Lemon Meringue Pie.

For this cake I baked a lemon zest and essence sponge cake, filled layers with lemon curd and covered the cake in Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I decorated it with a white chocolate sail and French Meringues.

Lemon Sponge Cake Recipe

225g butter (softened)

225g caster sugar

4 eggs

225g plain flour

1tsp baking powder (heaped)

Zest of 1 lemon

1tsp lemon essence

Line two 6″ cake tins.

Preheat the oven to 175°C

Cream the butter and the caster sugar until light & fluffy.

Add 1 egg at a time, scrap down the sides and ensure the mixture is all well combined.

I’ve just got back from 2 weeks in South Africa and while it was great to see family, I really missed my baking! So to make up for missing 2 weeks, this is a bumper post with not one but two special recipes and optional varieties!

My daughter’s birthday is 4 days before my husband’s and they obviously have very different tastes but baking 2 full size birthday cakes within one week is a little more than even I can eat!

So… my answer is cupcakes and half my standard recipe so that you can make a variety of flavours. Each recipe will give you 9 cupcakes and I recommend putting 50g of cake mix into each cupcake wrapper to give you that pretty little dome. I over filled the sprinkles cupcakes and they ended up all flat in top.

Beat the butter for 3 mins. Sift the icing sugar into the butter and beat for 8 mins. So ode the icing in half.

Add vanilla extract to one half for the Sprinkle Cupcakes. Add cocoa powder and 1 TBS of milk to the other half for the Chocolate Cupcakes.

Pipe butter cream onto cupcakes and decorate as desired.

To change up these recipes; Sprinkles could be replaced with glacé cherries, chocolate chips or lemon zest. Sour cherries could be replaced with caramel chips, peppermint extract or peacan nuts. Whatever your heart desires.

P.S. I used a silicon mold and candy melts to make the mermaid tails, I then sprayed them with silver food spray.

Enjoy offering a a variety of cupcakes at your next party or family gathering!